Presidential Management Styles
Trump's style may be a unique blend.
Shift back to the first Trump administration. The Secretary of the Interior is preparing to resign and the deputy Interior secretary, David L. Bernhardt, is summoned to the White House to meet with President Trump.
The meeting, Bernhardt’s first in the Oval Office, is cordial. They discuss a variety of current and impending Department of Interior issues and President Trump tells Bernhardt of his interim assignment as Acting Secretary. Trump then asks if Bernhardt has any questions.
Having worked in the George W. Bush administration where the White House staff often served as a filter between the Interior Department and the president, Bernhardt asks, “Who do I report to?”
Trump replies, “You report to me.”
Bernhardt says, “I know that’s what the Constitution says, but who do I actually report to?”
Trump again replies, “You report to me.”
At that point, Bernhardt realized he was in for a very different experience from the one he’d had serving under two Secretaries of the Interior.
Presidential management styles can often be dramatically different. As I wrote in a previous post, Dwight Eisenhower had a more formal system which appeared to be rigid on the surface but was augmented by Eisenhower’s use of back-channel communications; a secret strategy that gave him an unfiltered view of what was really going on in the cabinet departments.
Formal systems with a clear chain of command are designed to save the president’s time. Historical accounts repeatedly confirm that time is one of the most valuable commodities for chief executives. Without gatekeepers, they get swamped by their own cabinet members and other top-level officials who seek to get their arguments in before – ideally just before – the president makes a decision. Those associates use various tricks to achieve access, such as meeting the president on one subject and then, at the doorway, saying, “By the way” and raising another.
The downside of formal screening systems is that while saving the president’s time, they may block needed information and dissenting opinions. That’s where a president’s chief of staff plays a key role. Effective chiefs of staff – the president’s official gatekeepers – have to determine how to protect the president’s time while making sure that dissenting opinions get “face time” with the main decision-maker.
In contrast to his predecessor, President John F. Kennedy preferred a less formal approach by using decision making circles that emphasized the pragmatic over the best and had far less screening than the Eisenhower system. The drawback to that accessibility is the wear and tear on the president’s energy. Imagine being pressured in opposite directions by some of the most knowledgeable and eloquent people in the world and you can get a sense of the tug of war that exists in all White Houses unless it is reined in.
If the formalistic system risks the problem of too little information, the more open and collegial approach risks that of too much information.
President George H. W. Bush, whose system was closer to Eisenhower’s, was noted for hosting what he called “train wrecks” in which advisors with strongly opposing views would argue their cases in front of him. It was a clever way of getting both sides to prepare and present their strongest points.
Variations of the formalistic approach were followed by Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama.
Lyndon Johnson’s system was very personalized like the antiquated one which exhausted Franklin D. Roosevelt. A natural talker and accomplished negotiator, LBJ replaced JFK’s habit of studying staff papers and reverted to personal meetings which gobbled time. All roads very much led to LBJ and that produced an inevitable drain on presidential attention and energy.
President Carter began with a loose system that consumed far too much of his time. His obsession with details caused him to stray into unnecessary activities such as reading the entire Air Force budget and monitoring who played on the White House tennis courts. As his term progressed, he shifted to a more formalistic arrangement.
We are still in the dark with regard to President Biden’s system, but it is safe to say that his extremely small number of cabinet meetings indicates a White House largely managed either via or by a few trusted aides facilitated by a compliant press corps.
At this point, President Trump’s style is a blend of heavy delegation and direct access, of formalism and pragmatism, but that is an early call. When you have an administration operating amid DOGE audits, the power balances are different and old rules are hard to apply.
It may be the equivalent of changing the tires while the car is still moving, but the ultimate result may be much clearer authority, responsibility, and accountability.
Closing Note: The anecdote of David L. Bernhardt’s meeting with President Trump comes from Bernhardt’s book: You Report to Me: Accountability for the Failing Administrative State, which was published by Encounter Books in 2023.
Bernhardt’s book provides a helpful view of the administrative state. For presidential management styles, I recommend the following books:
Joseph A. Califano, Jr., Governing America: An Insider’s Report from the White House and the Cabinet. [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981.] A major Washington power player, Califano served under both Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter. He reveals clear differences in their leadership and management styles.
Fred I. Greenstein, The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to Barack Obama. [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.] Greenstein was the historian who discovered Eisenhower’s “hidden hand” management style which made Ike “the Clark Kent of the American presidency.”
David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest. [New York: Random House, 1972.] An intriguing look at the Kennedy and Johnson White Houses during the Vietnam War.
Richard Tanner Johnson, Managing the White House: An Intimate Study of the Presidency. [New York: Harper & Row, 1974.] An excellent analysis of presidential management styles.
Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan. [New York: The Free Press, 1990.] Neustadt was a pioneer on the subject of presidential power.
George E. Reedy, The Twilight of the Presidency. [New York: New American Library, 1970.] Reedy was a Special Assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson. He warns of the dangers of isolation and hubris.
William Safire, Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House. [New York: Random House, 1975.] Fascinating. Safire worked in the Nixon White House as a speechwriter. He gives a keen take on policies and personalities.
Michael S. Wade. Leadership’s Adversary: Winning the War between Leadership and Management. [New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2002.] I confess to being slightly biased on this one.
Chris Whipple, The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency. [New York: Crown, 2017.] Outstanding. Should not be missed.